Unwittingly, spring break 2009 has evolved a theme: eat ice cream every day. I’m not sure how that happened but I do believe it’s a tradition I could repeat.
Yesterday, the boys had friends over to play. These sisters typically bring their electronics, but came empty-handed. Now I know my boys are creative and capable of role-playing without props, but I hadn’t realized what a crutch the DS and the Wii had become when “entertaining” their friends. Fortunately, I had already planned to do a cooking activity with the kids when their play devolved into tearing the house apart, but I didn’t expect, given how things were going, that I would have to interrupt a rousing game of Mouse Guards and fort building to get the kids interested in making ice cream.
The sisters were the most excited to cook so washed their hands and rolled up their sleeves. I had them measure and stir, and we talked a bit about the process. You prepare your flavorings—fruit, chocolate, coffee, and so on—so they’re reading when the custard is done. Then you heat milk or cream and sugar, temper egg yolks with the heated cream, and re-heat the mixture until it thickens and you have custard. Then you strain the custard into the flavorings and chill in the fridge or over an ice bath. Later you freeze the custard in an ice-cream maker, according to manufacturer’s instructions, and voila!
Dinosaur Egg ice cream was inspired by one of our favorite flavors at Izzy’s. For the recipe, we used David Lebovitz’s amazing cookbook, Perfect Scoop, as a jumping off point. I’m including the recipe here because it’s easy and fun to do with kids, but the malted milk ice cream base is amazing so even if you didn’t add malted milk balls, you’d still be plenty happy.
Today we had lunch with another set of friends at Snuffy’s Malt Shop, where we had malts with our burgers, naturally. (I know, yoga body scupting be damned!) Winston and I split a vanilla malt, for comparison to our malted milk ice cream. The malt was sweet and delicious with the perfect amount of maltiness. I would add more malt powder to the ice cream base next time round.
Dinosaur Egg Ice Cream
inspired by Izzy’s and David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop
1 cup half-and-half
3/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt
2 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup malt powder (I might try 3/4 cup next time)
4 large egg yolks
1 cup malted milk balls, coarsely chopped (in the spirit of the season, we used Brach’s malted milk eggs)
food coloring (we used 3 drops of green gel paste food coloring; blue or violet would be awesome)
In a medium saucepan, over medium heat, warm the half-and-half, sugar, and salt, until sugar is dissolved. Take off heat. In a large bowl, whisk together the heavy cream, vanilla, and malt powder. Set a mesh strainer on top.
In another bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm half-and-half mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Scrape this mixture back into the saucepan.
Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat. Scrape the bottom as you stir. The mixture should thicken and coat your spoon or spatula (if you drag your finger through—be careful! mixture is hot—you’ll have a line in the custard). Pour the custard through the strainer into the malted milk mixture. Whisk. Place the mixture in the refrigerator or nestle it into a larger, ice-filled bowl.
When the mixture is completely chilled, add food coloring and whisk well to distribute. We were going for a pale tint. Pour into ice cream maker and freeze, following the manufacturer’s instructions. When the ice cream is frozen, fold in the chopped malted milk balls.
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